


Six Impossible Things

by TaleWeaver



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Gen, It's possible I might be projecting my own issues a bit, friendship fic, writer's angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22695136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWeaver/pseuds/TaleWeaver
Summary: Robin’s trying her hand at creative writing, and is bouncing plot ideas back and forth with Cormoran one morning at the office.Written for the Love Letters: Cormoran Strike Valentine's Day Fest.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11
Collections: Love Letters: A Cormoran Strike Valentine's Day Fest





	Six Impossible Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemon_verbena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_verbena/gifts).

Robin frowned, and the pen in her hand added another blue arrow, arching from the centre to near the edge of the paper. “But why would someone steal it in the first place?”

Cormoran looked up from his newspaper, behind his own desk. “Steal what?”

“The Eiffel tower.”

“No one ever has, as far as I know. You can’t steal the Eiffel tower – it’s big, it’s heavy and it’s stuck to the ground.”

“That’s the problem.”

Cormoran took a long sip of tea, realised it had gone cold – what else was new? – and gave up. “Sorry, you’ve lost me.”

Robin threw down her pen with a sigh of disgust. “You remember how I got that Adult Learning Centre gift certificate for Christmas? Well, the only two courses that I liked the sound of, and could actually fit in my schedule, were candle making and creative writing. I figured creative writing would be easier to fit in – I could tap away on my phone on stakeouts or whatever. We’ve got this assignment, to come up with a summary for a story and work on the six basic questions. Humph. More like six impossible things!”

“What’s your story?” Cormoran asked, hiding a smile as Robin huffed.

“The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower. That’s the title, I mean. It sort of sprung into my head on the tube on the way home after class, and now it’s stuck there.”

“What are your six basic questions?”

“What else? Who, What, Where, Why, When and How.”

“Alright, so you’ve got your who – the girl – and the what – the Eiffel tower, which goes with the where. So you’re stuck on the why, and I’m guessing you’re going to have major problems with the how.”

“Exactly.” Robin picked up the sheet of A4 paper she’d nicked out of the office printer and showed it to Cormoran. ‘the girl who stole the eiffel tower’ was written in the centre with an oval around it, with arrows sprouting off with the six questions written along the lines. “I tried the brainstorm thing the teacher showed us, but it’s not helping.”

Cormoran absently took another sip of tea – it really did taste awful – while he thought.

“So maybe mix up the order? Maybe the When or the How might give you a why. Go a sci-fi bent and use a shrink ray?”

“Didn’t Gru do that in _Despicable Me_?”

“Oh yeah, Lucy’s kids love those movies. How about When – set it back when the Tower was being built, and have your girl try to steal the materials or something?”

Robin’s face scrunched up in thought. “Hmm... doesn’t seem to really go with the title. Shouldn’t it be the actual tower?”

Cormoran turned the mug around in his hands. “Hang on... I was having lunch with Eric the other day. He was sniggering about this email he’d got from a mate of his in Interpol, about how some American billionaire dickhead paid out fifty million quid to buy the pyramids.”

“Pyramids? As in, **Egypt**?”

“Yep. The Interpol mate reckons he knows who it is, some Irish bloke whose family’s been crooked for centuries, but they’ve never had enough on him to even bring him in for questioning. But the thought among the brass is that anyone who’s enough of a dickhead to buy another country’s national monument deserves what they get. How about something like that?”

“Hmmm.... could work. Any other ideas?”

“How about changing the Where?”

“Sorry?”

Cormoran took a sip of tea to wash the foul taste out of his mouth – he really needed to get a fresh cup – and elaborated. “Who says the Eiffel tower has to be in Paris? There’s at least a few replicas standing around. You could even have that as part of the plot – she sends Interpol a note telling them she’s nicking the Eiffel Tower, and they think it’s a terrorist threat or something, so everyone turns up at the Champ de Mars and it turns out she’s really nicking the one in Japan!”

Robin grinned. “I like that idea, screwing with people’s preconceptions is how a good heist movie works anyway. Japan, you said?” She turned to her computer and brought up Google. “Damn. Looks like that won’t work. A) it’s actually a bit taller than the one in Paris, therefore heavier and B) it’s called the Tokyo Tower – well, Tokyo Radio Tower, but you get the point.”

“Wait a minute,” Cormoran stared at the wall, trying to remember something he’d only seen through a fog of Doom Bar. “Couple of weeks ago... Ilsa was at that conference, so I went round to keep Nick company. We got royally pissed and he knocked over that hideous vase... what was on the telly? Some woman climbing the Eiffel Tower to get away from a horde of zombies... Vegas!” Cormoran snapped his fingers. “It was the remains of Las Vegas!”

Robin turned to Google again. “At the Paris hotel in Las Vegas... damn. It’s half size, but it’s got a restaurant inside it, and the back legs go through the hotel. That might be even harder. Besides, I can’t write about a heist in Vegas, everyone’ll say I’m ripping off _Ocean’s Eleven_.”

Cormoran groaned. “Do me a favour; don’t ever mention those movies around Shanker.”

“Really? I thought they’d be right up his alley.”

“It’s the demolitions bloke. Shanker takes that shitty Cockney accent as a personal insult. Long as you remember to put the subtitles on and mute it whenever that bloke opens his mouth Shanker’s alright.”

“Things to remember, got it. But how the hell do I steal the Eiffel tower?” Robin groaned, collapsing onto the desk and burying her face in her arms.

Cormoran took another sip from his mug – what kind of tea had Robin used in this, anyway? – and thought hard, turning the idea over in his head. “What about another shot at the Where? We said before ‘who says the tower has to be in Paris?’, yeah? Who says it has to be a monument?”

Robin’s head came up, her face half-covered by her tumbled hair, as Cormoran continued.

“Go with me, here – remember the American billionaire dickhead? How about he announces that he wants to buy the Eiffel Tower – the one in Paris – and the French government or whoever laughs in his face publically. Social media picks up the story, laughs all round the internet. American billionaire dickhead goes off in a huff saying he didn’t want their dirty tower stinking like cheese anyway, and makes his own out of gold and studded with gems – like those bloody rappers with the huge gold dollar signs around their necks with diamonds. Anyway, American billionaire dickhead calls it the Eiffel tower as well, just to be extra insulting, and decides to put it on display to show off how rich he is. So your girl steals that!”

Robin tossed her head to throw her hair back, and grinned. “I love it! I can even use that idea about sending the note, so everyone shows up in Paris when she’s really somewhere else! Too bad I can’t use the Paris hotel in Vegas though, that would have been a great two-part bluff.”

“Isn’t there a Paris in Texas?”

“Let me check.” A few clicks of the mouse later, and Robin announced, “No good, the place is tiny. What if I used the Paris hotel anyway, only I don’t reveal that she’s in Vegas, rather than France, until the end? Or what do think of the American billionaire dickhead displaying his gold Eiffel tower in Paris, France, down the opposite end in – wait, the tower’s in the seventh arrondissement, what’s the furthest away?”

Cormoran thought back to several of the weekends he’d spent in Paris with Charlotte. “Either the twelfth or the nineteenth. Not sure there are any big museums in either of them, but you could make one up?”

Robin turned back to her desk, turned over the piece of paper, and started scribbling with new enthusiasm. “This is great, Corm, thanks!”

“No problem. Want a cup of tea? Mine’s gone stone cold.”

“Yeah, thanks. I picked up a new box of teabags the other day, check the cupboard.” As Cormoran passed her desk, Robin asked, “Wait, what mug are you using?”

Cormoran displayed the logo of a yellow Pokémon wearing a deerstalker – a gift from his nephew Jack.

“Isn’t that the one you were using last Thursday, before you had to rush out?”

It was now Monday, and he hadn’t been back to the office for more than a few minutes since.

“That would explain it then, wouldn’t it?” Cormoran sighed, and headed off to the kettle.

**Author's Note:**

> ‘The Girl who stole the Eiffel tower’ is from the 1964 movie _Paris When it Sizzles_, starring Audrey Hepburn.  
The Irish bloke who sold the pyramids is _Artemis Fowl_; Eric’s friend obviously didn’t want to tell him that his suspect was a young teenager!  
The movie Cormoran was watching, with a woman climbing the Paris hotel, Las Vegas replica of the Eiffel tower is _Resident Evil: Extinction_.  
Cormoran’s mug shows _Detective Pikachu_; the original game was released in 2016, but was in development as early as 2013, so Jack might have got hold of an early piece of merchandise – that, or this is the TV show timeline rather than the books?


End file.
